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General Government

General Government

Miami-Dade County continues to be recognized as a national leader in deploying strategic management practices in local government. The FY 2015-2016 Adopted Budget continues our sustainable spending practices establishing the basis for a five-year financial forecast that is balanced and includes contributions to the Emergency Contingency Reserve. By FY 2019-2020, reserves are estimated to reach $100 million of the total general fund supported budget.

In February 2015, Miami-Dade County launched opendata.miamidade.gov, officially kicking off its Open Data Program, simplifying public access to essential data including permitting, 311, GIS and public safety. These data sets represent more than 50,000 views per month, marking one of the most impressive open data portal launches in the nation.

In 2015, the County partnered with Code for America to tackle customer feedback loops within the Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources. Three technology specialists, along with County staff, created “The MDC Dashboard,” an app where customers who wish to provide feedback can do so via a web or text survey. The results display on a public facing dashboard where a high-level aggregation of this daily updated data is publicly available, closing the feedback loop that had previously been left open. Furthermore, the dashboard aggregates data from opendata.miamidade.gov to give residents and employees a more customer-driven perspective of service delivery.

The Department of Communication’s 311 Contact Center answered 1.8 million calls this year; an estimated 85 percent of all 311 inquiries were resolved on the first call. In addition, nearly 300,000 service requests were generated and forwarded to departments for processing and follow through.

More than 33,000 customers were served both in-person and through self-service options at 311 Service Centers operated at three major County locations, issuing more than 5,500 Golden/Patriot Passports and 6,800 Baby Stroller parking permits.

Residents’ access to government service was made easier this year through significant enhancements to 311Direct, the County’s mobile app to submit service requests. The upgrade allows for submittal of additional service request types while greatly improving upon the previous design. The upgrade also included the release of a mobile-friendly website and Android download.

The Miami-Dade TV (MDTV) division reached 60,000 unique visitors webcasting online, resulting in more than 930,000 views of the County’s public meetings. MDTV broadcasted more than 150 government meetings in 2015. This year, the team also introduced Miami-Dade TV Live on YouTube, leveraging the platform’s widely used features and broadening access to additional channels such as streaming set-top boxes (Apple TV, Roku).

Miami-Dade County’s Facebook page grew from 19,000 to 34,000 likes in 2015. More than 120 MDTV-produced public education videos were posted throughout the year, resulting in more than 1.4 million views on the platform. On Twitter, there were more than 30,000 Twitter followers on the County’s main account, having steadily gained about 1,000 followers a month throughout the year. While the County's Instagram account also grew to over 5,300 followers.

The Elections Department (Elections) continues to be the largest and most complex elections organization in the State of Florida. In 2015, 19 municipal elections were conducted for approximately a half a million voters.

In 2015, Elections completed the second of a two-phase comprehensive countywide reprecincting plan. This plan aligned new precinct lines with the district boundary lines and reduced congestion at overpopulated polling places ahead of the 2016 Presidential Election cycle.

The Tax Collector Division of the Finance Department implemented the “Skip Tracing” program in the Credit Collections section to assist in tracking delinquent account owners and to improve debt collections processes and efficiency.

Finance’s Bond Administration Division facilitated a total of 14 financing transactions completed during calendar year 2015 in excess of $2.4 billion. The financings included 11 new money and refunding bond issuances and one police vehicle lease. Taking advantage of low interest rates, the division generated in excess of $229.8 million in debt service savings, which equates to $163.4 million in today’s dollars.

The Finance and Information Technology departments continued implementation of the Invoice Workflow Automation (IWA) Application. The application has been deployed to ten departments representing 47 percent of total dollars processed in Accounts Payable in the Finance Department. This project has received both the NACo (National Association of Counties) and the ACE (Advanced Commitment to Excellence-Florida Government Finance Officers Association) awards for efficiencies and cost savings by lowering invoice processing costs, eliminating paper handling during invoice processing and retrieval, and reducing the receipt-to-pay cycle time.

The Information Technology Department received awards from the National Association of Counties (NACo) and the Public Technology Institute (PTI) for the development of a Rainfall and Water Level Monitoring Online System; a Credit and Collection Online Payment System for residents to pay via the Internet; the Housing Loans Online Payment System to facilitate resident payments to the Public Housing and Community Development Department; a vendor portal for the County’s procurement process; and for Private Cloud Back-up and Recovery which provides the capability in a disaster to recover the County’s data remotely.

The Audit and Management Services Department (AMS) issued 30 audit reports that resulted in improved operational efficiency, effectiveness and enhanced compliance within various County departments and companies doing business with the County. Audit assessments and monetary recoveries totaled $7.8 million and $6.7 million, respectively.

Office of Management and Budget’s $2.9 billion voter-approved Building Better Communities General Obligation Bond Program is approaching its eleventh year. Work is currently ongoing in over 200 project sites with over 1,000 sites completed in past years. There have been ten bond issuances yielding $1.535 billion.

Miami-Dade County continues to be on the forefront of deploying strategic management practices in local government. The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) Center for Performance Measurement recognized the County for its ongoing efforts in measuring and improving local government performance. This is the 13th consecutive year that ICMA recognized Miami-Dade County and the seventh year the County was awarded their newest and highest level of recognition, the prestigious “Certificate of Excellence,” which was awarded to only 33 jurisdictions in the country.

The Internal Services Department (ISD) completed construction on the new state-of-the-art Children’s Courthouse facility and held a grand opening ceremony in May 2015. The Courthouse is now occupied and fully operational.

ISD designed and managed the construction of the Northeast Aventura Branch Library, which opened in June 2015. The state-of-the-art library is Miami-Dade County’s first sustainable public library, and has adopted a focus on technology and public art.

ISD has been maximizing efficiency by aggressively relocating County offices from privately-leased space into vacant County office space. Since Fiscal Year 2011-2012, the County has achieved annual recurring savings of $1.7 million of taxpayer dollars by moving County offices from privately-leased space into County space.

ISD received the NIGP Institute for Public Procurement Certificate of Achievement. The certificate was issued in August 2014 and expires in July 2017.

Human Resources offered the MDC Jackson First option, an additional, more affordable healthcare option, to 6 out of our 10 unions who accepted this new option for calendar year 2016. This option provides for dependent premium savings of approximately 35-63 percent compared to current HMO and POS plans.

During 2015, the Commission on Ethics and Public Trust (Ethics Commission) conducted more than 240 investigations; issued more than 350 opinions; and conducted more than 100 different training sessions for elected officials, candidates for local office, advisory board members and lobbyists.

The Ethics Commission also sponsored a successful Ethics In Education Conference in partnership with University of Miami Ethics Programs/Arsht Ethics Initiative and Miami-Dade Public Schools attracting more than 200 participants and nationally-renowned speakers.

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